On the 25th August 2018, the book “The Netherlands and synthetic drugs” by Pieter Tops, Judith van Valkenhoef, Edward van der Torre and Luuk van Spijk was published. In this book, the authors calculated that in the Netherlands, annually 971 566 879 XTC pills are produced, 80% of which is exported. This book prompted many reactions, and the authors responded to these again by recalculating the export percentage. In this blog post I respond by calculating how much XTC the world uses every year, a number that implies that the export percentage was not what was incorrect, but the total production estimate.

Recently, a report came out (“Waar een klein land groot in kan zijn”) by Pieter Tops, Judith van Valkenhoef, Edward van der Torre and Luuk van Spijk (all employed by the Dutch Police Academy) drawing two sensational conclusions. First, that every year, the Netherlands produces € 18 916 882 439 (18,9 billion) worth of synthetic drugs. Second, that in the Netherlands, every year 194 313 376 ecstasy pills are used. This latter conclusions is clearly wrong, which sheds doubt on the veracity of the former. Both the original report and the abbreviated version are written in a sensationalist tone; might the authors have neglected to verify their impressive conclusions with sufficient rigor?

[ Note: this is a first draft, a preprint of a blog post so to speak 🙂 ]

A recent 72-author preprint proposed to recalibrate when we award the qualitative label ‘significant’ in research in psychology (and other fields) such that more evidence is required before that label is used. In other words, the paper proposes that researchers have to be a bit more certain of their case before proclaiming that they have found a new effect.

The paper met with resistance, and although any proposal for change usually is, what’s interesting is that in this case, the resistance came in part from researchers involved in Open Science (the umbrella term for the movement to mature science through openness, collaboration and accountability). Since these researchers often fight for improved research practices ‘at all costs’ this resistance seems odd.

[These are some thoughts that I’ll eventually work into a paper, so it may be a bit rough/drafty]

Psychology is characterized by an interesting paradox. On the one hand, it’s a very popular topic. After all, everybody’s a person, and the most important influences in most people’s worlds are other people. Who doesn’t love learning about oneself, one’s loved ones, one’s boss, and the leaders of one’s country? People are endlessly complex, so psychology and psychological research provide a veritable fount of knowledge.

On the other hand, that complexity of the human psychology is tenaciously denied. It is almost as if that complexity is seen rather like a spiritual entity, safe to invoke whenever it’s convenient to stare in wonder at the awesome quirks of nature and never-ending weirdness of people, but blissfully disregarded whenever it it threatening or gets in the way of day-to-day activities.